Trilypse is my Flagship cargo design. It's more of a shape, and configuration, than a fully tested platform, (I don't have a wind-tunnel,) and admittedly, it's powered by a lot of liquid crystal handwavium, but it's far future, assuming some "Sufficiently Advanced Technology." What I'm saying, explicitely here, is it's Science Fiction, albiet with a lot of careful considerations to make it at least technically feasable.

Anyway, it's named for the shape, an aerodynamic Trilypse (Elipse with 3 focal points) with a central airlock/reactor, cockpit, and toroidal tank. The 3 engines are in outboard nacelles, blended into the "Corners". Intended as an OStEO (One Stage to Earth Orbit) capable transport, and orbital freighter, the "Cargo" at liftoff is liquid Helium, to make the most energy intensive flight in it's performance envelope. The Rutherford Reactor liquifies atmospheric Nitrogen (which seperates first,) and bombards it with Alpha Particals, stripped Helium nuclei to alchemically transmute it into Oxygen, and Protons. The electrons are used to attract the ions to the Anodes, and Cathodes, then the products are re-routed to the engines.

The configuration works as a heat-exchanger, which raises efficiency by an order of magnitude. (Estimated.) In such a system, waste comes out as heat, but this powers the seperation, in the liquid nitrogen substrate. The by products are gaseous, but ionized, the Hydrogen drawn down against the vector of accelleration, (or gravity, when landed) by electromagnetic charge forces. The Anodes are HelIon (Helium Ion) Rams, which induce a high magnetic flux/Voltage potential in the reactor. Oxygen Floats up.

It's got a good mass/thrust ratio, enough to hover, and VTOL on Earth, but uses body lift through most of the hypersonic flight. One engine acts as an intake, also enhancing the partial vaccum, and airflow over the craft. It can fly with any point foreward, but changing direction in atmospheric flight is dangerously tricky. (Probably an AI controlled maneuver.) Extremely high inertial loads for the crew.

It can seat three, in the roughly triangular topside cockpit, or bridge. In orbit, this is abandoned for a different flight mode. Now, the whole ship is spun, with the tank pressurised as habitat volume. About 2M diameter in the square-tubular cross section, but looped around a 5 meter outer diameter (1 meter hole in the middle of the donut.) The airlock extrudes, and contracts in the center, with it full out the rear of the ship, this area is open through the middle.

So, it's basically a coin shape, with a set of six curved walls around the center. They slide in, and out in pairs, or sets of three to transfer gasses, and extend the exterior hatch as a cargo lift. A matching lock can mate with these six walls to transfer people, and cargo. All six are also packed with all the field effect, pumping, and ionization equipment to use the chamber as a reactor.

In orbit, this ship is designed to interact with the complex infrastructure in place there. You can't just take off for orbit, and then fly off to the stars without refueling, but you get there with a highly valuable commodoty, Oxygen. It's very good at producing, and recycling it's supply for life support, so a lot can be sold for Reaction Mass, like Hydrogen (Which is collected from the Solar Wind.)

At that point, it can also carry a lot of Cargo, higher in the Gravity well. Joining the system of transferring goods, and services in an established orbital society. One of the starter stories for my SFRPG, is safed up the character's whole life for one of these, and retiring to orbit, where the life is a lot easier, if not less risky. By our calander, about 3700 AD, though the year has been reset to 0 several times in the storyline. The last one was re-uinificaltion between humans, and Gelfi designed to live in orbit, a few decades after the advent of the Trilypse.

The engines, well, that needs a lot of work. I've decided on Plasma State Ion, to make them compact, but potentially powerful, with enough energy. Same with the Battery, it's blown into the body to fill all those gaps in a collodal Florogell state, but it's all lampshaded in the story as "Proprietary Technology".

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Last edited by Psiberzerker on Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I also have the basic concept for interplanetary, or conceivably stellar flight. At least down to the shape, and concepts involved, like the Trilypse, I don't have a Lab to test most of it, except in thought experiments, and simulations. (An Orbital one would be nice.)

In situ with it's intended role, it use the biggest, and most central power supply available, the sun. This puts out a steady stream of light, and intermittant bursts of charged particals. The solar "Wind", it's stormier than a lot of people imagine, which means course corrections need to be made through out the trip, to most efficiently use this resource. Also Reaction Mass, it's driving force uses mostly protons, ionised for not having Electrons, and spouse atoms to ballance their charge in neutral molecules. (H2.) Also some of the rarer ones with a nutron, or two stuck to them. Deut/ritium nuclei.)

The primary is a large solar sail, don't ask me what it's made of, I have a lot of ideas, but they all add up to theoretical technocant. I can describe the desired properties, but assume it's some advanced material, or composite we don't have yet. 1st, it has to be light, so I made up a siliconitrile aerogel with anthracium (Carbon molecular lattice) which is hard as diamond, but with the tensile strength of Fullerine nanotubes in a plane. These are laminated (Don't ask me how) with a conductive layer on both sides.

To induce a feild effect, electrons flow through it, but opposite charged ions flow inward on a surface current to an intake to be forced down a concentric partical driver. Pretty much a railgun, but constructed precicely enough to accellerate protons in a continuous stream to the end, where they're neutralized by the central flow of electrons. Visually, I imagine a glowing envelope of plasma distended backward, and a coheirent lightning bolt flying out the back.

The shape is a toroid, but with a flow revesal to one side, I'll arbitrarilly call back. In the direction of where you're flying away from, it's limited to deep space, because this flashy discharge could be concidered a weapon used in crowded space lanes. This is, however a bunch of energy flying backwards, which means enough accelleration on a light craft with 1 G of constant force. (Faster with a boost from a solar gust.)

A light weight personal vesion of this is little more than a cockpit, and enormous Bussard ramjet, to make interplanetary trips as short as possible. Preferably, you could have your personality read with neuronano, and transferred to a small containment substrate, only adding decagrams to the total craft. Light, and powerful enough for interplanetary travel, it's vicarious, but as realistic as Memory.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Last edited by Psiberzerker on Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Memory Probes are far future interstellar scouts sent from the solar system as the first exploration of distant stars. First, let me point out that this is waay far future, millenia from now, at least. Also, travel on this scale takes Decades, with any technology. I'm assuming Relativity still dictates a Universal Speed Limit that can't even be reached with mass, and without infinite energy. In other words, it's all sub-light speed.

Around half that, actually, as .5c is about the point where relativistic effects make any further accelleration exponentially less efficient. The proof is mathy.) I'm not going into what was found, where, because this is a technical post. Anyway, the trips I'm talking about are on the timescale of Decades.

They're extremely risky, as well as resource sensitive, the biggest thing that can go wrong is simply running out of energy, on the long, cold dark coast between stars. The less you take, the better it goes, because that means less energy to potentially run out of. This is the rationale for saying you can't go in person. In principal, I'd rather send less mass than a suited human being, much less the volume, and resources to keep you alive, and from killing yourself out of boredom.

So, what I came up with is neuronano. Originally used to make the nanoscopic connections for a physical mind-machine-interface, it's one of the oldest, and therefore most developed cybernetic technologies. Eventually, it could be programmed with a Write Once Read Many (WORM) protocal to copy all the signals in a brain. In essence, this could copy the personality, and thought processes of the Mind, which uses it as a substrate. {Bionic Axio/Synaptic Inter-Active Transfer Substrate, or BASIATIS (c) 1997, Psiberzerker.}

I'm straying away from the Spaceflight aplication here, but theoretically, you could get it down to a negligable mass, even with the devices neccessary to interface this with a ship. Then, all you have to do is turn it off, and fire it to a star. Then, live a few more decades to get something back. Since it's copied from your neurosystem, ideally you could experience everything it does through sensors. It would be just like a memory, and hypothetically tour the new system the way you would.

Of course, it would be nice to be more than just look, from orbit, which would require adding another technology. I vote for some sort of Assembler, capable of converting any found mass into devices from found materials. Either Nano, or a magnetolytic Reactor I'm more capable of describing than designing. Hopefully, there'll be asteroids, or commets, which probably arent all that rare around stars.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Last edited by Psiberzerker on Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Now, here's how I propose you get up around to .5C with a sail shaped Busard Ramjet, and not much else. First, point the parabolic antenna roughly towards the sun, and somewhat tilted toward the direction of your orbit. (Unfortunately, I can't estimate the angle without a Mainfarme, and a good Program/mer to simulate it.)

Now, this design can't push at right angles to it's major plane, nor turn too far away from the sun without losing collection efficiency. With a sensor, though, you can see solar storms long before their sublight partical gusts make it to you. At this point, you're breaking orbit, to fall inward as fast as possible. Most resembles a cometary path, until apogee (Closest point to the sun), where you change it by thrusting.

The whole way in, though, you're collecting mass, and speed. Gravity pulls you harder, making you collect faster, gaining mass, and accellerating. The three forces reinforce each other, while the Gravity factor does so weightlessly. It's kind of as hard to explain as a lot of Quantum concepts, but since the whole craft is pulled equally, there's no stresses caused by it. Freefall.

This allows you to accellerate faster than the body (designed for it in the first place) is rated for, converted into Gees. If you don't bring a body along, and it's all an array held in shape by plasma pressure, and a high energy flux field, I'm going to guestimate it in the kilometers/s/s order of magnitude (Hundreds of "G"s), which is getting into the high time dialation range of velocity change.

In short, you better have a good fast AI driving, or high timescale, because you're reactions are going to be slowed by spacetime as you take off. This is a serious push, with the coheirent lightning bolt probably sensed in the mid Xray frequencies pointed directly at the sun. Superconductor doesn't begin to touch the rate of energy doing this would have to withstand, but did I mention it's far future?

The whole way out, it's pointed straight down for the most efficient vector. That's what you're trying to leave, your residual velocity qucikly gets oveshadowed in a steep parabolic exit trajectory. The trick here is hitting what you aim at. Once you leave the system, course corrections become extremely energy intensive, so the closer you can get to the second start to the right, the more likely you'll be able to re-start before dawn.

Because when you get there, you're going to want to slow down. The trip isn't worth it if you simply blow past, or hit anything at that speed. Once you're coasting, timescale goes back to normal, but you're shut down to minimal sensing to hopefully see anything coming, and save the rest for restart.

Once in system, you repeat the trajectory, but in reverse. This time, all mass is shot forward as fast as possible, then you collect on the way out until you're too slow to escape out the side, nor back the way you came. From there, you have to thrust most of it out to re-orbit back in-system. At last, it can point outward, and use the engine as antenna, to beam what it senses back between the light cones. To it's like minded creator, who hopefully lives long enough to receive it.

Further probes can be sent behind it, as fast as we can build, and launch them, hopefully with more advanced assembler nano, as well as personalities specialized to using them for building a new society.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

An Aqueous Reactor is one of the technologies that could fill the niche of making what you need out of what you have available. In essence, it's a sealed chamber full of water, or other solvent fluid, suspending dissolved, and coiloid chemicals. This is surrounded by a large magnet. About twice the size of a current generation MRI array, double the lenth, for the size of a minimal Airlock.

A nice cylindric shape, with the magnet to push against, it could simply be launched with a railgun, parallel to the Memory Probe, and timed so it can be recovered about halfway between stars. Before braking, a similar sail, and cannon launched it at a steady .5c, and was decellerated by it enough to re-orbit.

The principle is based on magnetic resonance, which makes it possible to make a magnetic feild which "Switches" certain atoms, and lets them switch back. At that point, the affect on the feild can be analyzed to learn the position of every one of those atoms. With more compentation power, and experimentation in the Field, it's throretically conceivable to affect the chemical inteactions of those chemicals. (It helps that one of the atoms that responds to this is Hydrogen.)

Now, I will point out that all the chemical reactions underpinning the biochemical operations which are the basis of all life as we know it are in Aqueous Solution, and leave you to your imaginations. At the very least, I doubt that re-creating the body you're used to, or a custom unit adapted to the expected conditions would be out of the question.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Yes, lots of handwavium involved. But I suppose someone from the 15th or 16th century would be incredulous of a description of our modern world.

Well, I hate to do it, because I consider myself a Hard Science fiction writer, but at some point, you have to assume that our technology will improve. There's some things we just can't do with present materials, (Such as interstellar travel), so the trick for me is not making a magical substance that violates the laws of physics (As we understand them).

These limits sometimes help me, though, which is how I came up with the telepresence method of exploration. Even if we can't go, we can experience it, though decades later. Eventually, we could send real people, but I'm dumbfounded as to how. The investment would be wasted if we got there to find there's no planets (Likely around Binary stars, which aren't actually rare. The 3 body problem gets even harder when two of them are gravitationally bound stars.)

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Interstellar travel IS possible today it just isn't practical. As in we can't focus the resources it requires because we are too busy being squabbling monkeys throwing poo at each other.

The telepresence (actually synthetic memory) is a good idea. Even if you do send people, being able to share the information/experience is a good thing (and a way to recoup the investment?). But you really don't have to worry about physically transporting it back and forth, you can transmit it electronically just as easily and actually more quickly (relatively), its already going SoL.

Interstellar travel IS possible today it just isn't practical. As in we can't focus the resources it requires because we are too busy being squabbling monkeys throwing poo at each other.

Not really. I mean, the Human element is holding us back, but the fastest objects we ever created, Voyagers, have been going for over half a century, and haven't left the Heliosphere. Our technology hasn't advanced much since then.

Chemical rockets ain't gonna do it, period. The fuel adds too much mass to accellerate it. Electric rockets we have today would be fine for a miro-probe, but run out of energy/reaction mass shortly after passing the Vgers, and probably not be able to brake when they got to a new system. To accellerate something the mass of the Apollo module, 1 person, and the volatiles to keep him alive up to .5C would require more energy than humanity has used in the entirety of our existance. That would make Proxima in under a decade, where we know there's no stable orbit for a planet, because it's got 3 stars.

Simply put, it can't be done with modern technology.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

Last edited by Psiberzerker on Wed Feb 22, 2012 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Generation ships. They would be big. They would be slow. They would be risky. But they are possible.

The risk would be minimal, with that amount of resources, but we don't have the technology to build one in orbit, and it would be too large to send up in pieces. Something with a laout similar to the ISS wouldn't be able to withstand the acceleration, and it would have to be roughly spherical for volume efficiency. You're basically talking about The Death Star, with an engine instead of turbolaser, and no Hyperdrive.

_________________"You can't have everything, where would you put it?" -Steven Wright.

It doesn't take Buck Rodgers, but it does take bucks. Give the likes of Elon Musk a billion dollars or so to specifically go to the Moon or Mars, and if the government stayed out of the way, you'll see it happen.